Why Did You
Attend The Virtual Tech Fair?

No matter where technology ends up driving you, you’re certain of only one fact, it’s going to be somewhere you, and your organization haven’t been before. This means you’re going to have to change, and that, far more than any technological problems you might encounter along the way, will be your biggest challenge. Honestly now … how good is your organization at managing change? Stay tuned if you’d like to get better at it.

Peter de Jager is a speaker/writer/consultant on the issues relating to the Rational Assimilation of the Future. He has published hundreds of articles on topics ranging from Problem Solving, Creativity and Change to the impact of technology on areas such as privacy, security and business. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Futurist and Scientific American.

Neil Gholson recently assumed the Wholesale/ Distribution leadership role within Deloitte. Neil has been with Deloitte for more than six years, having served clients in all segments of the consumer business industry. He is currently lead client service partner for Graybar and industry advisor for WW Grainger.

After three years in the making in a $2 million research project, Deloitte Consulting LLP and NAW’s Distribution Research and Education Foundation (DREF) recently launched Driving Growth and Shareholder Value: The Distribution Value Map™, providing a practical framework and hundreds of provocative, actionable ideas to consider to drive revenue growth, profitability, and shareholder value in a competitive economy. The Value Map framework has been tested and put to use, it works, and Neil Gholson will show you how to make it work in your company.

There are tools and capabilities that can help you sell. Find out how it is done, what it costs, and how you can make money. The future is here today – now it is up to you to use the new capabilities to gain competitive advantage.

Steve Epner is a well known expert in the world of Industrial Distribution. He is the founder of the Brown Smith Wallace Consulting Group and is know for making technology understandable for mere mortals and busy executives.

This may be the most important online education program you see this year.

Author of the Effective Inventory Management Guide series, Jon is a regular contributor to industry publications such as Modern Distribution Management, The Wholesaler, Electrical Wholesaling, Outlook, Sanitary Maintenance, and Contracting Profits.

Jon is also the "Subject Matter Expert" in inventory management for the American Productivity and Quality Center, and he serves on the Controller's Advisory Board of Practitioners Publishing Company. He is often a featured speaker at conventions and inventory management seminars throughout North America.

Excess Inventory. Dead stock. Obsolete inventory. Surplus stock. Regardless of what you call it, every distributor has opportunities for internal growth and the technology exists to turn this problem into a revenue generator.

On average, 30 to 40 percent of a distributor's inventory falls into the category of dead stock and is contradictory to the basic premise of what makes a distributor successful -- turning around inventory quickly and for a profit. Fortunately technology is available to solve the problem of dead stock by matching buyers and sellers in real time and at a very low cost.

Many wholesale distributors have a pre-conceived notion that, all else being equal, a large software company has advantages over a small company.

Here we explore the top ten (10) “myths” common held by distributors who share this perception. We will provide proof sources to dispel these myths and, in turn, give you a better set of criteria to evaluate software companies.

Wholesale distributors must have robust, efficient systems to handle the large number of transactions generated by the daily procure-to-pay and order-to-cash processes.

Learn about proven best practices for the wholesale distribution food services industry and be able to meet market demands and compete effectively without straining your budget or risking your business. Set the stage for future innovation.

For many logistics service providers, a primary concern in the supply chain is supporting manufacturing suppliers who follow “lean” principles in their operations. The question arises – can the same lean concept be applied to logistics operations? With the right systems in place, the answer is yes.

Join us for this educational session to understand how lean principles can be applied to the supply chain. You’ll learn strategies for running a lean supply chain from your warehouse to your customers and suppliers.

Integrated Distribution Management focuses on the order and distribution processes that help distribution businesses win and keep customers. It connects suppliers, distributors, customers, and your internal operations to optimize processes across functional boundaries.

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), a key component of this Integrated Distribution Management system, allows the vendor or manufacturer direct insight into the supply requirements of the customer, thereby allowing them to react quickly to changing supply demand. The key decision is to know what, when and how much inventory to purchase, without building excess inventory, while preventing stock-outs.

Applications run ning on diverse platforms, different database management systems, different data formats, different messaging protocols, and different data transport mechanisms all add to the complexity. Can you work with XML, replicate between DB2 and SQL Server, send formatted SMTP mail, FTP entire folder structures recursively, and process Excel spreadsheets – in a single script – automatically?

Integrating all of these disparate systems and data stream is critical to moving business transaction data across the supply chain. Learn how to you can build your integration processes quickly end easily, then deploy them to the platform of your choice. Come see IBS Integrator at work – prepare to be amazed!

As Distributors' businesses have been pulled to serve opportunities across the globe, into new product lines, and into new business models, the effect on inventory levels and distributors' financial performance has been to create an "inventory avalanche", which is threatening distributor profitability. Whether you are a small, medium or large distributor, you now need to anticipate demand for product and plan for it, stock smarter and not necessarily more.

This web session will highlight an exclusive AberdeenGroup benchmark report on inventory management technology strategies for distributors and identify key actions that can improve the profitability of your business.

Distributors today can begin taking advantage of several exciting, new technologies designed to help them improve customer service, boost sales, cut costs and increase efficiency.

This presentation will offer a detailed description and preview of some of the most prominent — and promising — of these technologies, including mobile Web access, remote deposit capture, and radio frequency identification (RFID).

Microsoft is a leading provider of solutions to the Distribution industry. Microsoft Dynamics™ delivers the visibility into operations, customers, and suppliers that is required to help track products, lower inventory levels and deliver on customer-specific requirements while helping lower the cost of internal operations.

Built on a platform you know, Microsoft Dynamics delivers the integration from customer to warehouse to general ledger to supplier needed to help support your growth while allowing the flexibility required to meet increasingly difficult customer mandates.

Distributors can drive down their delivery costs and drive up their bottom line. We will show how distributors can gain complete control of their delivery operations through effective planning, measurement and analysis. RouteView provides the tools to make it easy for distributors to attain their goals, whether that is to reduce trucks, eliminate overtime, increase fleet capacity or improve customer service.

The national average cost to keep a box truck on the road is about $85,000. By balancing workloads and setting a pace for the drivers, RouteView can save up to 25% of existing delivery costs – that is the equivalent of one truck! In fact, RouteView usually pays for itself in less than one year.

The Wholesale Distribution industry is a critical cog in the overall supply chain, delivering roughly 80% of all products brought to market. With over 500,000 companies operating worldwide, today’s distributors face intense market competition and a host of business challenges, including disruptive mergers and acquisitions, rising customer expectations, and an increased demand for value-added services. It’s more important than ever to manage customers and products profitably, and implement ways to grow revenue and lower costs.

Join us for this informative education center session focusing on current industry trends and challenges. The presentation will look at the future of technology in Wholesale Distribution and how distributors are enabling enterprise technologies to address current business issues while driving growth and profitability.

Are you considering a new software system implementation? Are you excited about it? Chances are…no. Most companies have a deep-seeded dread of this process, but there are things that you can do ahead of time that will not only help you determine what direction you want to move in, but establish a foundation for you to be able to determine how much return you make on your investment in time and money.

Join Scott Pugmire of Sage Software to discover techniques that will give you better insight into how your business is operating today, and better define the issues that you’re trying to resolve. Then take a look at how to measure the progress that you’re making once your new system is up and running.

Route sales and delivery can be an effective way to grow your business but it can also create a myriad of inventory tracking issues.

Join Kate Heim of Scanco to learn how to utilize state of the art technology to capture and discover pertinent information at every point in the route delivery process.

Knowing what to stock, when, and how much in order to meet customer requirements is difficult to determine with a large population of SKU’s. Adding the variability of demand, supplier lead times, financial constraints, business objectives, vendor requirements, etc, across thousands of SKU’s, creates a nightmare for inventory planning. So how do best-in-class organizations effectively manage one of their largest assets and provide high service levels?

The answer can only be provided through inventory optimization. This presentation will explain how incorporating inventory optimization can provide inventory intelligence that reduces inventory and improves service levels.